Screen flickering issues

I think I’ve got a bit of an issue with my laptop, or maybe it's just how it's behaving on my monitors (it shows up on both the main laptop screen and the external one I have plugged in).

Here’s the situation:



You can see it happening at the bottom of the screen—basically, I'm scrolling through a Microsoft Excel sheet when it happens. It looks like some kind of screen flickering, I guess. I just finished installing Windows 11 Pro and everything is completely up-to-date. Does anyone have any clue why this is happening? Is this probably a hardware failure? Or maybe there's something I can try to fix via software?

...try unplugging your mouse

wearymason4 said:...try unplugging your mouse

It only seems to happen when I'm using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. 🙂

Thomas Sanchez2 said:I think I’ve got a bit of an issue with my laptop, or maybe it's just how it's behaving on my monitors (it shows up on both the main laptop screen and the external one I have plugged in).

Here’s the situation:



You can see it happening at the bottom of the screen—basically, I'm scrolling through a Microsoft Excel sheet when it happens. It looks like some kind of screen flickering, I guess. I just finished installing Windows 11 Pro and everything is completely up-to-date. Does anyone have any clue why this is happening? Is this probably a hardware failure? Or maybe there's something I can try to fix via software?

That is clearly a problem with the graphics chipset; my assumption is that a single pin isn't soldered properly or perhaps it loosened up due to overheating. Alternatively, there is a possibility that the display's ribbon cable is having issues distributing signals across one of its pins... though that all depends on the specific factory design of the device (some screens have their own dedicated chips, others use COF cables, and some don't have chips within the display assembly at all), and even COF cable issues are possible, though unlikely in your case.

The fact that this is isolated to Microsoft Office doesn't change much, as it would likely show up in any similarly intensive program, but it serves as a clear indicator that the fault lies within the chipset or the controller managing it. My suggestion is to simply ignore it and let it run until it eventually dies.

It is easy enough to claim that it might "hypothetically" be a driver issue. The fact that you are running those recent Windows updates actually makes things worse if the chipset manufacturer pushed out a buggy "up-to-date" driver for an obsolete chipset, or if they lumped an entire series of chipsets into the same driver package.

If you are feeling curious, try playing around with the refresh rate within the driver's control panel; for instance, try setting the screen refresh cycle to 60Hz. That should address the flickering problem you demonstrated.

By the way, are you seeing any issues when running video games, assuming you even play them?

darkcyclist92 said:That is clearly a problem with the graphics chipset; my assumption is that a single pin isn't soldered properly or perhaps it loosened up due to overheating. Alternatively, there is a possibility that the display's ribbon cable is having issues distributing signals across one of its pins... though that all depends on the specific factory design of the device (some screens have their own dedicated chips, others use COF cables, and some don't have chips within the display assembly at all), and even COF cable issues are possible, though unlikely in your case.

The fact that this is isolated to Microsoft Office doesn't change much, as it would likely show up in any similarly intensive program, but it serves as a clear indicator that the fault lies within the chipset or the controller managing it. My suggestion is to simply ignore it and let it run until it eventually dies.

It is easy enough to claim that it might "hypothetically" be a driver issue. The fact that you are running those recent Windows updates actually makes things worse if the chipset manufacturer pushed out a buggy "up-to-date" driver for an obsolete chipset, or if they lumped an entire series of chipsets into the same driver package.

If you are feeling curious, try playing around with the refresh rate within the driver's control panel; for instance, try setting the screen refresh cycle to 60Hz. That should address the flickering problem you demonstrated.

By the way, are you seeing any issues when running video games, assuming you even play them?

Makes sense. A few days ago, I updated just the graphics drivers directly from the manufacturer's site, so it seems fine for now (though I guess that doesn't mean much yet). I played around with the refresh rate before (for an external monitor), but that didn't help anything. The laptop belongs to a colleague and she only uses it for work, so she doesn't play games on it. Thanks 🙂

It looks like installing the latest drivers directly from the manufacturer's site actually did the trick. So far, everything seems to be running fine. 🙂